If the wind-chill factor is minus-7 degrees and it`s Sunday, we must be inspecting the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
I am a few years out of practice in looking at campuses, but it all came back recently when I made a round of New England colleges with a high school senior to test a new travel offering: college tours conducted by a Long Island company that takes a van or bus of young people between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening, providing driver, hotel rooms, chaperones, meals and transportation for $315 a person.
The enterprise rates an A for organization and a B for execution.
College Preview Tours, which began last fall, is operated by a company that has conducted summer tours for teenagers for 25 years.
For this examination, I joined Marcina Zaccaria, a high school senior from New Jersey, and a family friend, for the trip of Dec. 1, 2 and 3, the last the company scheduled before spring.
Touring incognito
No one but Zaccaria knew that a reporter was on the trip and she maintained silence on this point. Because I was incognito, I could not quiz the other students on their views of the weekend; Marcina`s report is appended.
The schedule called for a 700-mile circuit, with campus tours of an hour or so at five colleges and quick glimpses of two others, with Friday and Saturday night at the Sheraton Tara in Braintree, Mass. Meals were to be at campus dining places.
We were picked up Friday noon on schedule by a van. We collected one more client, and nine of us-six young people; Bob Nichomoff, the escort-guide, who is a New York City teacher during the week; and a young driver, Chris; and I- began to drive toward Storrs, Conn., where we had a date at the University of Connecticut, which is known as UConn.
The tour was to cover Boston University; UConn; Northeastern in Boston;
Tufts in Medford, Mass.; Brandeis in Waltham, Mass.; and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
The trip had been laid out with care.
Hast necessary
The big need was to get to Storrs before dark on Friday so as to be able to see the campus, but this was a tougher job on Dec. 1 than it was earlier in the fall.
On the way, Nichomoff provided folders of information prepared by his company.
The gist of the weekend was the actual inspections. The schools provide the guides and set up the format, so College Preview Tours is not responsible for the inadequate ones-the University of Massachusetts tour did not go into a single building-or credited for the good ones.
Indulging the preferences of a batch of teenagers would make tours far too long. But young people in a group pressed ahead: Cars on campus, visiting hours in the dorms, food, meal hours, room draws, size of freshman lecture classes, importance of grade point, coed dorms.
Whether asked or not, each tour guide gave a detailed description of security procedures, such as safety areas where blue lights illuminated places they could go to stand in view of a television camera.
Information provided
Some of the colleges piled on catalogs, maps, picture books, campus publications, application forms. When a college did not provide publications, Nichomoff wrote out the name and address of the person to contact.
College Preview Tours` arrangements for campus tour guides worked well. Stephanie, a Long Islander, was on the spot at UConn and so on down the line. We were due at Tufts at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, which would have been full dark, and Nichomoff decided earlier would be better. He called repeatedly to get the date moved up, but never reached anyone in charge.
When we drove onto the Tufts campus an hour and a half early, he got out to see what could be done and returned with Craig, a student who had formerly been a tour guide and readily agreed to conduct the hour tour.
Nichomoff`s skills at managing young people were apparent. When he asked the students for suggestions on the way home, they were specific.
I chimed in when they said they should have been told there was a motel pool so they could have brought suits, and Nichomoff concurred that physical activity after the long drive Friday would have been good.
College Preview Tours resumes operations on March 2. Five tours will continue to be offered at $315: Pennsylvania, Eastern Upstate New York, Washington-Maryland-Delaware, Western Upstate New York and Massachusetts-Connecticut. Buffalo-Rochester, with an air departure, costs $370.
The president, Bill Cooperman, said that new distant tours were to be added in a new brochure. The headquarters is 14 Suncrest Dr., Huntington, N.Y. 11746; 800-666-2556 or 516-424-1000.
Another company, College Tours, in New Rochelle, N.Y., expects to resume similar tours this spring as an adjunct to its college counseling service. The number is 914-633-3636.
STUDENT`S-EYE VIEW
SOURCE: By Marcina Zaccaria. The success of the College Preview Tour depends on the individual tour leader at each university. The tour guide at Tufts was so enthusiastic about his school that he made me wonder why I had not previously considered it.
However, the guide at UConn gave the distinct impression that four years there could the worst four years of your life.
An unscheduled excursion to Faneuil Hall in Boston was the most fun event. We had the pleasure of eating fudge while watching two blindfolded fraternity pledges singing ”Strangers in the Night.”
The hotel was unique and a pleasant place to stay. We enjoyed commenting on the Beefeater costumes and spending time with the pool staff.
The first night, however, was extremely boring for us. We were not told that the hotel would have an indoor pool, so none of us had brought suits.
The food on the tour was horrible.
The company running the college tour took us to the worst cafeterias at the universities. We were overjoyed on Saturday morning when the Burger King at which we were scheduled to eat breakfast was closed.
Our lunch at a private restaurant near B.U. and dinner from the counters in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace were the best meals we received.
Insufficient money
However, the touring service did not provide us with enough money for the food at these places, forcing us to add our own money.
The people operating our tour were friendly and accommodating. Bob, our leader, tried his best to be flexible and still maintain order. It was obvious he had plenty of experience dealing with teenagers.
The tour allowed me to see a couple of schools that I had not previously considered as well as spend time with five other students my age.
For students like me who know they are interested in school in a particular zone, it proved worthwhile. –
WHO TO CALL For airline complaints: The U.S. Department of Transportation, 202-366-2220.
For suspect business practices: The Better Business Bureau, 312-444-1188
(for inquiries) and 312-346-3313 (for complaints); the Illinois Consumer Protection Office, 312-917-3000; Cook County States Attorney, 312-443-4600;
and the Illinois Attorney General, 312-917-3580.
For travel complaints: American Society of Travel Agents, Consumer Affairs Department, 703-739-2782.
For U.S. State Department travel advisories: 202-647-5225.
